The shirts have begun filling the apartment in the last few days. We're working nonstop to get them shipped out to you all ("we" being me plus whoever I get for intermittent help thoughout the weekend). They're being packed up and labeled and stuff at this very moment, and will start shipping out when the post office opens Monday.

I can't give any guarentees as to how many will ship on the first day and how many will wait until Tuesday or Wednesday, but I will be doing it as fast as humanely possible, subsiding for the next few days on nothing but beef jerky, Capri Suns, and cheap delivery pizza if necessary.

So: you will all be getting your shirts very soon! And if you order one now, it should ship within a week or two. Kurt, the guy who makes the shirts, is still catching up. He has done a wonderful job so far, getting me a ridiculous number of shirts really quickly, and we should be fully stocked by the end of the week.

I'm sorely tempted to buy a tshirt. However I have one question. I live in the Ireland. Sometimes we'd have to pay customs and taxes when importing items from outside the European Union. This can be roughly 30% of the total cost of the item. I've only noticed this happening when an item is sent via a delivery company, i.e. UPS. It hasn't happened on the multitude of items (eg from Amazon, or other tshirts) when they are posted in the plain old postal system. If I were to order a tshirt, would it be sent in the post or with the likes of UPS?

I don't mean impossible as in can't be done. I more just meant that if it was possible to find a manufacturer

Good news. There is. These guys have told me that they will make them.

Here's the email I got back:

Dear Natalie,We normally do not make them, but we are able to. If you give me some morespecifics about the order, I can give you some pricing. The minimumquantity for orders of this nature is 500. If you have any other questionsor comments, please give us a call at 800-921-8661.

ebel wrote:I'm sorely tempted to buy a tshirt. However I have one question. I live in the Ireland. Sometimes we'd have to pay customs and taxes when importing items from outside the European Union. This can be roughly 30% of the total cost of the item. I've only noticed this happening when an item is sent via a delivery company, i.e. UPS. It hasn't happened on the multitude of items (eg from Amazon, or other tshirts) when they are posted in the plain old postal system. If I were to order a tshirt, would it be sent in the post or with the likes of UPS?

Teaspoon wrote:You mean that MÃ¶bius strip I made this morning is impossible?

Shit, sorry guys. I may have broken reality.

I want a Klein bottle. The real thing, a two-manifold in four dimensional space, not an approximation embedded in threespace. I'd really like to have a projective plane to put it on, but I just gave myself a headache trying to visualize it. Take an infinitely malleable square piece of paper, and draw arrows along the edges, pointing in opposite directions on opposing sides of the square. Now glue two opposite sides together, but twisted so that the arrows match up. That's a MÃ¶bius strip. Repeat for the other two sides, and you'll get a projective plane. I can get most of the way around, but something strange occurs at the twist. Even allowing the paper to pass through itself in three dimensions, I'm having trouble understanding what happens.

I don't mean impossible as in can't be done. I more just meant that if it was possible to find a manufacturer

Good news. There is. These guys have told me that they will make them.

Here's the email I got back:

Dear Natalie,We normally do not make them, but we are able to. If you give me some morespecifics about the order, I can give you some pricing. The minimumquantity for orders of this nature is 500. If you have any other questionsor comments, please give us a call at 800-921-8661.

Natalie wrote:True, but the forum has 700 some odd people registered. Of course, only 367 of those have ever posted...

It may also be that some other company will have a smaller minimum order.

The forums are a tiny fraction of the readers of the site; I would be okay with 500 bracelets. I might look into this, and if I do it, I'll send free bracelets to y'all for doing the research. Sound good?

>>Thank you for your inquiry on Aero's line of rubber bands. In order to>>give you appropriate information and samples, I have a couple of>>questions. Would it be possible for you to give me a call? 800-662-1009>>or 708-430-4900. Thank you again for your interest and I look forwarding>>to speaking with you soon.>>Regards,>>Steve Rowe>Aero Rubber Company, Inc.>Phone: 800-662-1009

I told Steve that I was mostly just curious, but that someone else may be contacting him about these.

Charodei wrote:I want a Klein bottle. The real thing, a two-manifold in four dimensional space, not an approximation embedded in threespace. I'd really like to have a projective plane to put it on, but I just gave myself a headache trying to visualize it. Take an infinitely malleable square piece of paper, and draw arrows along the edges, pointing in opposite directions on opposing sides of the square. Now glue two opposite sides together, but twisted so that the arrows match up. That's a MÃ¶bius strip. Repeat for the other two sides, and you'll get a projective plane. I can get most of the way around, but something strange occurs at the twist. Even allowing the paper to pass through itself in three dimensions, I'm having trouble understanding what happens.

Ever seen one of those 3D models with the bottle passing thru itself? It's just like that, except it's a flat cylinder and curved thru the 4th dimension.

Personally I think a duocylinder, the un-twisted torus analog (same as the Asteroids playfield) would be neater; it'd be symmetrical and it has the curious property that it can be rolled around along exactly two perpendicular axes.

Or maybe just the grand antiprism, as long as I'm name-dropping 4D objects.

Ooh, I hope my shirt has been shipped and that Royal Mail doesn't nick it!

Re: moebius stuff: I have a silver moebius ring, which is utterly fab. The people that make it have discontinued it, apparently, but I think there's still a few floating about. I love this ring -- brilliant design.

The bracelets sound like an awesome idea. If they get made, you can count me in! Oh and it looks like you'll be the first webcomic to break me and make me buy a shirt - I think I've got to get one of the Science t-shirts. Now all I need is some money...

I first read the previous post as "what are the chance we are gonna get some action in these shirts?"

Oh humurour missreadings how i adore thee

Painfully expensive intenational shipping tho

Is there any way to pay with a meastro card btw? :S
Curse my young age and whatnot

//Yepp, THE fjafjan (who's THE fjafjan?)

Liza wrote:Fjafjan, your hair is so lovely that I want to go to Sweden, collect the bit you cut off in your latest haircut and keep it in my room, and smell it. And eventually use it to complete my shrine dedicated to you.

Natalie wrote:True, but the forum has 700 some odd people registered. Of course, only 367 of those have ever posted...

It may also be that some other company will have a smaller minimum order.

The forums are a tiny fraction of the readers of the site; I would be okay with 500 bracelets. I might look into this, and if I do it, I'll send free bracelets to y'all for doing the research. Sound good?

I was wearing my science one in my college bar the other night when I realised that the people behind me were discussing the COBE data would count as rigged since it was normalised against a black body source. The joy of academia.

I read in one thread that Ryan would be happy with someone else selling the WWED bands if they could be made, and then I've read in this thread that he's getting quotes. Now I'm confused as to what the current situation is, so let me muddy the water some more.

I've just asked a company here in the UK to quote for 250 to be made in Pantone Process Black, with the twist to be suppied 90 degrees from the writing, and the join, in any, to be 180 degrees from the writing, and that the writing should be debossed.

If they can do it, I'm expecting a cost in the range of maybe 2 or 3 GBP per bracelet. This would drop with numbers, of course, the next boundary being 500. Getting an official "hell yes we'd sell these" could be handy in dropping the price.